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To: BubbaFred who wrote (49474)	5/5/2004 12:37:57 AM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Universities Segregate Stem Cell ResearchBy Peg Brickley The Bush Administration ban on federal funding for research involving human embryonic stem cell lines created after Aug. 6, 2001 has presented scientists with practical problems, as well as moral and ethical dilemmas. According to the policy, no federal dollars can feed work on new lines of human embryonic stem cells. Such research could hold hope for patients with Alzheimer and Parkinson diseases, diabetes, spinal cord injuries, and other afflictions. Now that private and state funds are arriving to fill the gap left by the federal ban, researchers are still faced with a quandary: how to work with new stem cell lines without endangering their access to federal funding. In California, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, and New Jersey, institutions have or are planning federally funded research on historical stem cells or on those from nonhuman or nonembryonic organisms. Such research would be taking place alongside the development of new human stem cell lines. The quandary remains, as researchers formulate rules to make sure they do not run afoul of the federal prohibition. Will it take a separate facility, separate bookkeeping, separate staffs, or other costly extra measures? Planners at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and Harvard University are exploring this new ground. Work on new human stem cells at Harvard takes place in a separate facility, according to Jane Corlette, associate vice president for government, community, and public affairs at Harvard. Rutgers has the advantage of state-funded buildings, says Wise Young, chairman of the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience at Rutgers. Current plans will use dollars promised by New Jersey to buy major core equipment for the new-line work, says Young. Stickers will identify which incubators, microscopes, reagents, and other lab tools can be used to house and study the new human embryonic cells, he says. Harvard also has carefully segregated the costs of new-line stem cell research to maintain a strict boundary between federal and private money. This means more than just separate tracking of expenditures, Corlette says. Harvard has a seperate pool of money to pay for supplies for the laboratory where new lines are handled. "We were more conservative than we really needed to be," Corlette says, "but at this point, it is still not clear how restrictive the rules will be." Ira Black, director of the stem cell research center at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Camden, NJ, says that, accounting issues aside, scientists face "very difficult and at times very painful" questions because of the federal rules. "Whether or not we are working on human embryonic stem cells, everyone in stem cell research feels the inhibitory effect," Black says. "It antagonizes collaboration and it antagonizes building integrative efforts with multinational pharmaceutical and biotech ventures. Everyone is reluctant to get involved in something that is not approved by the federal government." Peg Brickley (peg.brickley@dowjones.com) is a freelance writer in Philadelphia. the-scientist.com